The present invention relates to laser beams, laser and optical systems and the like, and more particularly to holographic compensation of a light source.
In some applications, generating or providing an optical beam that is substantially free of distortions, fringes and other anomalies or defects may be highly desirable. The applications include but are not limited to: free-space optical communications, self-referenced wave-front sensors, and all-optical wave-front compensation systems. A self-referenced interferometer is a self-referenced wave-front sensor requiring such an optical beam as the output of the reference leg. This reference leg output often is subject to anomalies, such as spatial filter throughput dropouts, fades, intensity fluctuations and the like. These anomalies may result from dynamic signal wavefront aberrations such as those caused by light propagation through atmospheric conditions or aero-turbulence. The signal wavefront aberrations may cause loss of signal at tilt sensors and interference detectors controlling adaptive optics wavefront compensation systems leading to poor system performance as a result of fades, dropouts, loss of tilt control, loss of high-order wavefront control and similar performance issues.